Digg Is Ded

oh meep, isn't that the place where linkswarm gets all its content??

nah, you're thinking of Drudge

LS predates the 'popular' link aggregator sites by a whole meeping lot.

Both Digg and Reddit came into existence around 2005. Megarad/LS was around since ... I want to say 2000?

There are three differences. One, voting is not entirely democratic and is only available to the alphas. Two, you gotta pay to be an alpha. Three, these other sites provide HTML 'upvote' meepons which one can use to suggest/promote an article at the aggregator site.

Otherwise, I wonder how often Vas, kHz and Oat hit themselves over the head for not being multimillionaires like the Reddit and Digg dudes ended up being.

There were other similar sites too. I think deli.cio.us, Technorati, and Metafilter are kind of similar, and so is Fark. I think most of them have done well, but not as well as the big two.

I just want LS to do as well as the other sites. I don't care if I see more advertisements.

Yet another victory for swarmers who live in their mother's attic... soon we shall rule the internet

Crackalackin: Otherwise, I wonder how often Vas, kHz and Oat hit themselves over the head for not being multimillionaires like the Reddit and Digg dudes ended up being.

I can't speak for those other two guys, but I do this constantly.

They had financial backing at the right time.

LinkSwarm's been around since 2002, incidentally.

I reckon 1 well placed dating ad on linkswarm would make Vas reasonably well off.

But still, no ads makes this place quite attractive.

As far as I can tell, I either have to spam the meep out of the page with ads, or go with really sheisty ones. (I've actually had spammers try to get me involved with meep that hijacked your browser and did kooky meep. Presumably there are people who say yes to them?)

oddly i was just reading some weird related meep. lowtax of somethingawful fame had a meep internet feud with one of the meepgos from that aspergian webcomic pennyarcade. they were both part of some referral network in like 2002, and the checks stopped coming. dude from pennyarcade meeped a lot, and referral company paid lowtax to act as a 'liason' or some meep...basically to be a paid shill. only he didn't get paid and that company folded like a month later.

is that even an interesting story?

megarad was way better.

nocal: is that even an interesting story?

Yes. A few years back there was some big thing about him being a paid shill for some Mangosteen product, too, so I'd guess there's a pattern of this. Someone more SA-centric could probably dredge up more salient details.

The one thing that made Digg/Reddit cool early in it's life cycle was the link voting system, it was also the thing that made it suck in the end because of all the meep around it. Sometimes content needs to be force-fed.

That just might be my inner socialist talking here.

Mangosteen

lol. actually i remember that one. he basically started a thread about feeling meepty, trying mangosteen, and feeling great. included an amazon referral link...

pretty quickly someone pointed it out, and he had a total meltdown and retreated from his own forums for quite a while.

If you want the proof of staying power based on a good idea, then the fact that you are still contributing to LS is all you need. That isn't to say that LS is of the same magnitude of reg or digg, but it's vision has remained true, if not improved. So Vas didn't cash out at the beggining, does not mean that he won't cash out in the end by being the last man standing. You know that showing up is 95% of success, but being the last one alive is also a good way to winning also.

So, my meep are out and swinging in salute to LS and Vas. BTW, who actually used Digg?

lorkdhuna: The one thing that made Digg/Reddit cool early in it's life cycle was the link voting system, it was also the thing that made it suck in the end because of all the meep around it. Sometimes content needs to be force-fed.

I think the phenomenon you're seeing is that most communities gradually shift in membership (and thus, in tone) over time. As they do, what makes everything tick undergoes subtle shifts, and the general communal 'personality' becomes more diluted and heterogenous. It happens everywhere, not just online -- it's a feature of human communities.

Digg and Reddit (and probably most of the places you've managed to hear about, by definition) blow up and get too popular too fast to retain the original feel. If you kick open the doors and let humanity flood in, what you're eventually going to have is a small slice of humanity, which probably isn't what you envisioned when you started. It's certainly not what I envisioned at the outset.

Reddit, at least, has managed to keep a certain amount of its original vibe since I started checking it out. It also has a heavy nerd angle and is fond of rejecting Digg. I don't consider that a coincidence -- part of describing yourself is describing what you are not and do not want to be. On the other hand, it has definitely gotten a lot more watered-down.

To the extent that cross-pollination-toward-lame-generality has not happened to LinkSwarm, it's because peeps keep the original spirit alive by occasionally reminding the stupid youngsters what's up. Those stupid youngsters eventually become elders themselves, presumably because they like what they originally found here, and gradually adding to it a bit, and hopefully keeping that OG meep going.

Basically, community policing to keep us us.

This explains LinkSwarm's vociferous rejection of Digg et al; it's basically one host creature rejecting the influence of another because it is unlike and thus unwelcome... and, in this case, meeping meep.

Even though I'm not Chinese, I realize that my writing style, sentence structure, and grammar is starting to make me seem like I'm Chinese.

Its true what they say about aging... every skill trait reduces.